Christianity and the Survival of Creation, Berry, Wendell

The reading was interesting. It had me really stop and think about it. I do like some of his ideas on the topic he has about us as ‘dust and breath’. Also, I have to say his way he went around to his point was very different.
I like how he quotes from the Bible to get his point. I found it funny that he ties it into his economy view. Another thing I like when he was talking about the idea of the church having a building. I don’t go to church as much as I would like to, but I think he’s right when he says God is everywhere, that we don’t need a building to practice.
“We are holy creatures living among other holy creatures in a world that is holy.” I really like this quote. It is kind of saying that we are no special or we are as special as the thing next to us. Bringing in Christianity to bring by these points is a really neat way.
I also like his viewpoint on the idea of work, “To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for.” The other quote I like about work is this, “Work connects us both to Creation and to eternity.” I believe that work should be something someone loves and it should {no matter what belief you have} be based off your love and belief.
For the most part he stresses on how “He formed man of dust; then, by breathing His breath into it, He made the dust live.” He is saying that we are a part of nature and that we are doing harm to His world.

The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen

There is a lot of truth to this essay. We debate all the time. I believe we are an argument culture. The humor of it is, I try-not very well- not to debate a lot . I find it pointless. He mention that at a point we ‘distort facts’. I agree, we do, and it’s one of the reasons why I believe debating has no impact on us. We all end up debating what we believe or our ‘feelings’ rather than the hard cold facts. I agree that it waste valuable times and sadly I have to agree that it will encourage us to lie. Look at the debates and you hear people say ‘Oh he lies,’ or so on and so on.
I noticed we do like to pin sides, that there’s only the ‘other’ side. He says we should mention that there are more than two sides.
On a random note: I noticed again the attack on poor technology. That it isolates people in a bubble. Or it enhances aggression. I sometimes just feel sorry for all the attacks on technology that helps our lives and even allow me to do this assignment. Why is it that people feel the need to blame a tool for their anti-social behavior?
In general, this essay has a lot of good points. It was well written and I liked how the writer divided everything.

It's Time to Ban Handguns by Lance Morrow

I really truly with a deep passion hate some topics. The ‘anti-guns’ topic is one of those topics. I always get angry when reading topics like this that I can’t help but digress away from the actually writing. So, please, excuse me if I get off topic. In the essay she uses words to paint very vivid images of how ‘evil’ guns are. She puts up little facts like those country that ‘ban hand guns.’ Have lower crime rate. Yet, I believe that we aren’t the highest crime rate. It shows how data can be put out there to support one end or the other.
I think what I found most offense is this comment “Most murders are done on impulse, and handguns are perfectly responsive to the purpose: a blind red rage flashes in the brain and fire a signal through the nerves to the trigger finger—“ To me, this is saying ‘ People can’t handle guns because they all act on impulse. I just have a hard time having someone tell me I can’t protect myself because I might get mad and shoot someone.
She had also mention list of people shot, but I believe wither there were hand guns are not, those people who had been shot by something else.
I believe Gun free zones do nothing but put other people in danger, I believe that a gun is a tool used to protect someone.
She had also mention the fact that ‘so many’ people want no guns, yet this isn’t a popular vote issue, it is an amendment that gave us the right to.
This has a lot of personal opinion in the topic and despite my hate for her view the essay was well done.

Leave No Child Inside by Richard Louv

This reminds me of Thoreau essay. Not because it has involves the environment but it points out the lack of activity we as people take part in as playing outside. I always like to refer back to other things I’ve read. Anyways, I agree with him that children are not outside as much as they use to be. You can see the difference back to, what, twelve years ago when I was a kid. That to me is a really short time. I look at kids that are ten or even seven and my jaw drops about their style of clothing—I think: How can a person play in that?
I had a friend say to me, as girls, that we all go through a tomboy age, were we just run around outside and get dirty. I hardly see anyone doing that anymore. I’ll have to say though after moving to Florida I rarely went outside. I was surprise when I first went down here in 8th grade that we couldn’t go outside during our lunch break and play.
I think that a lot of problem with the kids behavior and health problem would lessen if we had more kids outside playing, exploring and enjoying being kids. I was a health kid and I was always outside, I still go outside and listen or take a walk when I’m depress, and I still sometime feel trapped if I can even see outside. {It’s true, I hate when we have to put up our shutters, or my room is so dark or a place with no windows.. I go insane}. I don’t think it matters what type of ecosystem you’re in, wither it’s dirt or green, each environment is fun and important. I prefer piles of sands and desert like place.
I like the idea of outside classes, for a class that has to do with the environment. I cannot see a math class being conducted outside as I can a Science class, or depending on what writing they’re studying an English class.
Over all, I enjoy this essay. I enjoy that it didn’t bring in the ‘bad’ developer or builders as most essays on the topic would. I love the last part to quote it one more time:
“Developers and environmentalists, corporate CEOs and college professors, rock stars and ranchers may agree on little else, but they agree on this: no one among us wants to be a member of the last generation to pass on to its children the joy of playing outside in nature.”

In Defense of Talk Shows by Barbara Ehrenreich

I honesty did not like this essay. It wasn’t because of the style, or that it was boring. Even the general topic was okay. However, I did not like the message it was sending. The ‘feel sorry for those people who won’t help themselves.’ I strongly disagree with this message.
I don’t watch talk shows, I might had once seen Jerry Springer, but that is all. The title seems to go against the whole essay. She is not defending the talk show, but the people who are going on to talk shows and sharing their life story for our entertainment. Her reason is of why they do this is, “For the most part, is people who are so needy—of social support, of education, of material resources and self-esteem—that they mistake being the center of attention for being actually loved and respected,” this is the turning point of the essay that I became to hate. The, they are in poverty that these people are poor, that we must feel sorry for themselves because they have life so hard.
This essay has a lot of political views that I strongly disagree with and is probably while I dislike this essay so much.

The Whole Horse by Wendell Berry

Essays like The Whole Horse are harder to read than most, but I love reading them. I was first surprise to find that this essay was written in 2002. In all honesty, I thought this essay was written during the industrial area with the populist {I think that was the party that were farmers and hated industrialization}. In these types of essays I like to know a little bit about the author, what I found was that he had a degree in English, and went from University teaching. Then he owned a farm with tobacco, corn and other grains (Wiki).
With that in mind, getting in the essay I couldn’t hundred percent agree with him or disagree. For the most part, I would have to disagree. “Industrialism is the separation of people and places and products from their histories.” This statement I find to be false, because industrialism is part of our history and a big factor of it involving the well-being of our nation and the people. Then he mentions the conservation movement and its downfall. To me, agrarianism is the idea of taking both movements and putting it together on a small level. He is anti-globalization and anti-big government. However, he seems to lack a little history himself. If you divided it into a “sound local economy, in which producers and consumers are neighbors, nature will become the standard of work and production” for the sake of nature, you put the nation in trouble of being divided, and as history recalls divided we fall.
I understand the need to have a health relationship between nature and us, because we are in fact part of nature, but people will notice this and the way we have our economy set up we allow the people to control it. The author gives the fine example of this when he goes on talking about the food industry. Due to the bad food that the industry had to recall, or the change of society organic food had started becoming big, making room for change within the industrial system to switch to what the consumer wants. Just because the people do not hold on to useless stuff anymore doesn’t mean that we should blame those who brought on the change of better things. History is also about change.
I could go on about this writing, and nit-pick it, because I like reading these types of papers and debating with them, wither I’m right or wrong. However, I think it’s best I stop now. The piece was most interesting.

Attack of the Killer Cats by Leon Jaroff

Before I get into the my view of the essay, I would first like to say that the side writing of marking the essay, that black messy writing and marking drove me insane. It made it hard to forces on the story.
Now that I have that out of the way, I would like to say that this essay was somewhat cute. The content of the essay itself was a typically informative essay, or investigating essay, however the idea the investigating was on was cute. It was a ‘Cats are innocent angels, I think not.’ I just really like the topic. Other than that, for the type of essay it was, I slightly enjoy reading it. I like how the writer starts on why the researchers started their experiment to go on explaining the natural hunting of cats.
“These proud owners,” They reported, “seem quite unperturbed by the slaughter”, that is true. Any cat owner should know that cat hunts. When my family had cats, my sister would always get part of one of my cat’s meals. Therefore, it was not hard to believe that the owners are calm about the idea.
On the side note, I learned something new from reading this, I had no idea that Britain was suppose to be a nation of bird lovers.

Why We Crave Horror Movies By Stephen King

Reading this made me think of our discussion we had in class last Friday on the view of society when it came to violence. It made me change my view to say that it is not society that romanticizes violence but individuals.I agree with Stephen King, “But anticivilization emotions don’t go away, and they demand periodic exercise.” Deep down, those bad natures like being mean are pushed down and horror movies are one of the many ways to release it.
Stephen King also goes with another theory that perhaps we are all mentally ill, that “If we share a brotherhood of man, then we also share an insanity of man.” I will also have to agree with him on this. I know I talk to myself when I get mad. Moreover, most of those who we consider some of the smartest men in history where viewed as insane at some point.
I really enjoyed this essay. Stephen King uses it to protect his reasoning for his horror books and movies by telling everyone ‘Hey, I’m just letting out my humanistic feelings in a civilize way.’ Not really in those words but it’s the general idea. “It is true that the mythic, “Fairy-tale” horror film intends to take away the shades of gray….It urges us to put away our more civilized and adult penchant for analysis and to become children again, seeing things in pure black and whites. It may be that horror movies provide psychic relief…” Overall, this essay reminded me of another essay that Stephen King wrote that I can’t think of the name of, but it was comparing his horror films with fairy tales.

Once More to the Lake by E.B. White

Once More to the Lake was a descriptive. I could just picture the lake that the father remembered and took his son to. I think the short story was put together beautifully. The way White went back and forth from the father’s childhood experience and from watching his son go through the same experience. The way White wrote the remembering story you could feel the emotion that the father felt toward the lake.
Once More to the Lake made me think of any special place that my family use to go. This made me of the time when I was visiting my grandparents’ house in California. It been years since I last been there, and when I was there, I could remember every detail of the house and how it changed. In short, White used the basic way of how a person would remember a favorite place. White did a great job at making the paper real.
“It is strange how much you can remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back.” That statement is so true, and I’m sure if I went back to any place and see landmarks I would be able to remember the place.

Remembering 157-166

I found the remembering section helpful. As I was reading, I was taking in the tips and comparing them to how Beah wrote his book. All the points even were great and could even help me write a paper. The part I liked was on how to find a topic to write on, because this is the hardest part for me on any topic of a paper. To go to a library to look for popular magazines or to draw sketches of the past, digging up old pictures, visiting old places, brainstorming and so on, these are all helpful clips if I was to write a remembering essay.
I also like how the chapter covered both reading a remembering essay and writing a remembering essay some reading tips I enjoyed are how to read a remembering essay, “After first or second reading, however, we may want to tell our own story, to make it as entertaining…as the account we just read. At this point, we reread the account with a writer’s eye looking for those strategies and ticks.” Then it goes into the type of reading, the prereading, first reading, annotated reading and collaborative reading.
Altogether, the chapter was helpful section on the topic we are going to cover next.

Walking On by Henry David Thoreau

“Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure,--as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw.”
I had study Thoreau before and I would have to say I enjoy him. In his writings I can agree with him on some views of humankind he has. For example, he explains are materialistic views. He denials and bluntly bash on how materialistic people are. Through his writing, Thoreau strongly puts down what he believes and what we should do. He had said that this materialistic view is not for him, “Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.”
In this essay, he mentions the wrong of what society becomes that we don’t interact with nature, that instead we stay in our homes closet to unnecessary material when we have all just outside in the wild. I would like to think I could do the same, to give up my entire assets and go live in a wild without all my things that make my life comfortable. However, I just do not know what I would do without my computer. Never the less, I do agree with Thoreau that humans are too materialistic.

How to Mark a Book by Mortimer Adler

“A book is more like the score of a piece of music than it is like a painting” (22). I have a little music background to understand that line. The music becomes more meaningful and theirs, however, I would have to disagree with that statement not all books are like music, only some.
When it comes to reading and marking I can understand and agree with some of the things Adler is saying, but I just cannot do it. If I am reading a fictional book, wither it be for an English class or not the most I can do is highlight quotes or fold the pages that hold information. I am not sure if it has anything to do with the anti-writing on books from high school or not. When I take a fictional book, let us say Mice and Men, I cannot debate with the book. The most I can say is ‘I like the ending, I agree with it,’ but I cannot put in little side notes questioning a character action. It is the author work and art to create situations. In cases like this, the most I can do is mark things I do not understand underline words I do not know, or pick out the main ideas, but I cannot really argue with the book.
However, between textbooks, books written by philosophers and essays I agree a hundred percent with Adler. I can see why writing all over the books allows you to understand more, actively listen and so on. Those are the music and not the art that you can mark all over.
Adler has some good pointers and reasoning about marking a book. I would have to agree with most of what she debates.

Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott

Lamott with a sense of humor outlines the way to write a paper. She simply says sit down and write down everything that comes to your mind to create a shitty first draft, then a second draft, and finally the wonderful third draft. I cannot remember how many times I have heard from countless of people about writing more than one draft. Yet, the way Lamott wrote toward her readers had left a greater impact on me than another person that told me to do so.
This is probably because I could relate to Lamott when starting that ‘first shitty draft.’ When she started explaining her situation on the food reviews, I kept saying to myself, ‘I do that’ or ‘I can understand where she is coming from.’ I never took it in to consideration to write to whatever happens to come in my mind on the subject. The idea of just writing is a lot better then what I typically do, which is to wait until I have no choice but to write the paper.
I think there is a lot of truth to this, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper” (77). It gives me a little hope that my writing will improve.